Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T09:18:16.614Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Political or dental power in private and public service provision: a study of municipal expenditures for child dental care

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 August 2011

Lotte Bøgh Andersen ,
Mickael Bech  and
Jørgen Lauridsen
Lotte Bøgh Andersen
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of Aarhus, Denmark
Mickael Bech
Affiliation:
Institute of Public Health – Health Economics, University of Southern Denmark, Denmark
Jørgen Lauridsen*
Affiliation:
Institute of Public Health – Health Economics, University of Southern Denmark, Denmark
*
Correspondence to: Jørgen Lauridsen, J.B.Winsløwvej 9, 1., DK-5000 Odense C, Denmark. Email: jtl@sam.sdu.dk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Both professionals and politicians may affect expenditures for highly professional services provided in the public and private sector. We investigated Danish publicly financed child dental care with a special focus on the influence of politicians and dentists on the expenditure level. By studying spatial patterns in expenditure levels across municipalities, we are able to test the influences of these two main actors and the networks through which learning is achieved. Four hypotheses on the existence of different spatial spillover effects are tested. The empirical analysis is based on annual data from 1996 to 2001 for 226 Danish municipalities, thus allowing for the control for heterogeneity between municipalities and for intra-municipal correlations across time. The results point to differences in expenditures between municipalities with privately and publicly produced dental care. Furthermore, dentists appear to be the most important actors for the spatial spillover effects, and these effects are especially strong for municipalities situated in the same county that use private dental clinics. There is no evidence of political spatial spillover effects between municipalities.

Type
Articles
Information
Health Economics, Policy and Law , Volume 7 , Issue 3 , 10 July 2012 , pp. 327 - 342
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Andersen, L. B. (2004), ‘Bargaining power, political transaction costs and institutional change: private and public dental care in Denmark’, Scandinavian Political Studies, 27(4): 403–422.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Andersen, L. B. (2005), Offentligt ansattes strategier, Århus: Politica.Google Scholar
Andersen, L. B.Blegvad, M. (2006), ‘Does ownership matter for the delivery of professionalized public services? Cost-efficiency and effectiveness in private and public dental care for children in Denmark’, Public Administration, 84(1): 147–164.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anselin, L. (1988), Spatial Econometrics: Methods and Models, North-Holland: Kluwer Academic Publishers.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bech, M.Lauridsen, J. (2008), ‘Exploring the spatial pattern in hospital admissions’, Health Policy, 87(1): 50–62.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bech, M.Lauridsen, J. (2009), ‘Exploring spatial patterns in general practice expenditure’, European Journal of Health Economics, 10(3): 243–254.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bel, G., Fageda, X., Warnerd, M. E. (2009), ‘Is Private Production of Public Services Cheaper than Public Production? A Meta-regression Analysis of Solid Waste and Water Services’, Research Institute of Applied Economics 2009 Working Papers 2009/23, http://www.ub.es/irea/working_papers/2009/200923.pdfGoogle Scholar
Bennett, C. J.Howlett, M. (1992), ‘The lessons of learning: reconciling theories of policy learning and policy change’, Policy Sciences, 25: 275–294.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bennett, J. T.Johnson, M. H. (1979), ‘Public versus private provision of collective goods and services: garbage collection revisited’, Public Choice, 34: 55–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berg, R.Kjær, U. (2005), Den danske borgmester, Odense: Syddansk Universitetsforlag.Google Scholar
Besley, T.Case, A. (1995), ‘Incumbent behavior – vote-seeking, tax-setting, and yardstick competition’, American Economic Review, 85(1): 25–45.Google Scholar
Besley, T.Case, A. (2000), ‘Unnatural experiments? Estimating the incidence of endogenous policies’, Economic Journal, 110(467): F672–F694.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boyne, G. A. (1998), ‘Bureaucratic theory meets reality: public choice and service contracting in US local government’, Public Administration Review, 58: 474–484.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brueckner, J. K. (2000), ‘Welfare reform and the race to the bottom: theory and evidence’, Southern Economic Journal, 66(3): 505–525.Google Scholar
Case, A. C., Rosen, H. S.Hines, J. R. (1993), ‘Budget spillovers and fiscal-policy interdependence – evidence from the states’, Journal of Public Economics, 52(3): 285–307.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chalkley, M., Tilley, C., Young, L., Bonetti, D.Clarkson, J. (2010), ‘Incentives for dentists in public service: evidence from a natural experiment’, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 20(Supplement 2): i207–i223.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Christensen, L. B., Twetman, S.Sundby, A. (2010), ‘Oral health in children and adolescents with different socio-cultural and socio-economic backgrounds’, Acta Odontologica Scandinavica, 68(1): 34–42.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Costa-Font, J.Pons-Novell, J. (2007), ‘Public health expenditure and spatial interactions in a decentralized national health system’, Health Economics, 16(3): 291–306.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crain, W. M.Zardkoohi, A. (1978), ‘A test of the property-rights theory of the firm: water utilities in the United States’, Journal of Law and Economics, 21(2): 395–408.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Downs, A. (1957), En Economic Theory of Democracy, New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Freidson, E. (2001), Professionalism: The Third Logic, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Grytten, J.Sørensen, R. (2000), ‘Competition and dental services’, Health Economics, 9(5): 447–461.3.0.CO;2-A>CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jones, B. D. (1999), ‘Bounded rationality’, Annual Review of Political Science, 2: 297–321.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kravitz, A. S.Treasure, E. T. (2009), Manual of Dental Practice – Version 4.1, Brussels: Council of European Dentists.Google Scholar
Maupome, G., Gullion, C. M., Peters, D.Little, S. J. (2007), ‘A comparison of dental treatment utilization and costs by HMO members living in fluoridated and nonfluoridated areas’, Journal of Public Health Dentistry, 67(4): 224–233.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mueller, D. C. (2003), Public Choice III, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Revelli, F. (2001), ‘Spatial patterns in local taxation: tax mimicking or error mimicking?’, Applied Economics, 33(9): 1101–1107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Revelli, F. (2002), ‘Testing the tax mimicking versus expenditure spill-over hypotheses using English data’, Applied Economics, 34(14): 1723–1731.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simon, H. A. (1945) /1976). Administrative Behavior, Third edition, New York: The Free Press.Google Scholar
Simon, H. A. (1991), ‘Bounded rationality and organizational learning’, Organizational Science, 2(1): 125–134.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strøm, K. (1990), ‘A behavioral theory of competitive political parties’, American Journal of Political Science, 88(1): 112–127.Google Scholar
Virtanen, J. I., Berntsson, L. T., Lahelma, E., Kohler, L.Murtomaa, H. (2007), ‘Children's use of dental services in the five Nordic countries’, Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 61(12): 1080–1085.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed